The Weekly Standard

The neocon bible

How to lose money and influence people

IN “Hereditary Genius” (1869) Francis Galton argued that “natural abilities are derived by inheritance”. The British psychologist's undemocratic view seems oddly appropriate to modern America. Look at the Bushes and Kennedys in politics, the Earnhardts in NASCAR racing—and the Kristols in opinion journalism.

Irving Kristol steered a succession of magazines that helped to shape neo-conservatism: Encounter, the Public Interest and the National Interest. Ten years ago, his son, Bill, persuaded Rupert Murdoch to put up the cash to set up the Weekly Standard.

The omens were not good: it was very nearly called the American Standard (until Mr Kristol realised that this name adorns most American urinals). And its launch was overshadowed by another rather sexier start-up, John Kennedy's George (which had Cindy Crawford, not Newt Gingrich, on its cover). But the Standard now has a political clout in conservative America out of all proportion to its 80,000 circulation. Dick Cheney gets his biked round a day before its publication date. By contrast, George lasted only five years.

Why has it succeeded? One reason is Mr Murdoch, who continues to support a loss-making publication for ideological reasons (“our budget is a rounding error in the News Corporation empire” claims Mr Kristol). Another reason is a relative decline in the intellectual feistiness of the main conservative organ, the National Review, some of whose articles read as if they were dictated by Tom DeLay's office.

The Standard appeared just as the Republicans were getting used to running Congress—and discovering they had to run government rather than just protest against it. It has attacked George Bush's overspending and the crony-capitalism of K-street lobbyists. But it also thinks government can be used for conservative purposes—such as promoting the family.

Many old-line conservatives couldn't conceal their dislike of pointy-headed thinkers from hoity-toity east-coast cities like Boston and New York. The Standard is stuffed full of them. It is the mouthpiece of a new, self-confident conservative intellectual establishment that doesn't think its feuds with Harvard professors should bleed into a distrust of higher learning.

The old-line conservative movement had an almost Marxist obsession with driving people who didn't toe the party line out of the movement. The Standard is more eclectic. Its intellectual godfathers include not just conservatives like Leo Strauss and Harvey Mansfield but also tough-minded liberals such as Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Scoop Jackson. In 2000 Mr Kristol vigorously supported John McCain; his executive editor, Fred Barnes, championed Mr Bush.

To the magazine's critics this “heterodoxy” is just a smokescreen for a sinister orthodoxy—neo-conservatism. The magazine has been Washington's noisiest champion of an assertive foreign policy that tries to link American power with American ideals (Mr Kristol calls it “neo-Reaganism”). And there is no shortage of material for conspiracy theorists who want to show the Iraq war was a Zionist plot. Mr Kristol is a “semi-serious Jew” who is close to Paul Wolfowitz. He is also the head of the Project for the New American Century, which has wanted to oust Saddam for years. The Standard shares a building with the American Enterprise Institute, a right-wing think-tank which lists Mr Cheney's wife as a scholar.

Mr Kristol replies that neo-conservatism was more of a predisposition that shaped the magazine's response to events such as the genocide in Bosnia, rather than a pre-cooked ideology. He also points out that for most of its brief history he has been one of only two Jews on a staff of 28—a rather low proportion by the standards of American newsrooms.

Can it keep going? The shambles in Iraq has dealt a severe blow to the neocons. But the world's only superpower will doubtless discover other entanglements; and the Republicans will not stop feuding over how much government they want. The Standard will still have plenty to write about—provided, of course, that Mr Murdoch keeps picking up the bills.